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Anorak News | Taking The Michael

Taking The Michael

by | 11th, January 2005

‘IF Handy Andy and Changing Rooms have taught us anything, it is that it’s hard to spot the difference between a celebrity and a decorator.

Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen (aka Gary Taylor, painter and decorator)

And this has led to problems, not only for the viewers who like their TV to be made out of something more solid than chipboard and stencilling, but for the world at large.

News in the Indy is that a decorator who, among other things, masqueraded as a celebrity and TV presenter has been arrested and found guilty of some heinous crimes.

Given his track record, this dark-haired conman might call himself Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen, but his real name is Michael Hammond, and yesterday he admitted a single charge of being a public nuisance at Isleworth Crown Court.

His chief crime was to have tricked his way into the grounds at Windsor Castle and then used his phone to call police at the castle pretending to be Detective Superintendent Simon Morgan, a genuine Scotland Yard copper.

Impersonating a policeman, a deceit he’s said to have perpetrated dozens of times over the past six months, brought him down. But there has been more.

For instance, the man the Telegraph calls the ”king of conmen” has tricked paparazzi and writers of gossip columns into believing he was everything from a ”film consultant” to a ”theatre producer” to a ”polo player”.

Hammond, who will be sentenced next month, is pictured in the Telegraph with Caroline Stansbury, a former girlfriend of the Duke of York, leaving a London bar with former I’m A Celebrity… contestant Catalina Guirado on his arm in the Times and posing for photos with Elton John at an Aids benefit party in the Indy.

And so we begin to realise that the man who also claimed to have been the lover of Dannii Minogue and Jordan is now what he pretended to be: a bona fide celeb.

Which means that he may soon attract some hangers-on, fantasists and wannabes of his own. Like Jordan, Dannii Minogue…’



Posted: 11th, January 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink